…and Other Unlikely Places

Wrestling for an Oscar Nomination

“When anyone challenges this story or thinks that I didn’t try to put the whole story out there, I’m like, ‘You know what? I bled for this thing,’”
Jason Hall on a wrestling confrontation with a Navy SEAL while researching American SniperTime magazine article by Eliana Dockterman

Here’s a little background on screenwriter Jason Hall on his road to writing American Sniper which to date has made over $375 million at the worldwide box office and earned six Oscar nominations including best screenplay.

“I sought out Hall because I find it instructive to see how a guy with one screen credit (2009’s Spread) and another coming (an adaption of the Joseph Finder novel Paranoia) gets white-hot so quickly. Every writer’s trajectory is different, but there’s a common thread: there is no such thing as an overnight success screenwriter. It’s years of struggle to find a voice, and then maybe a lucky break. Hall came to Hollywood to be an actor, and only found his way to screenwriting because things were going so badly. ‘I did TV parts in Buffy The Vampire Slayer and other shows, playing the bad guy or the MacGuffin bad guy, with the half-baked mustache,’ Hall told me. ‘I would read these terrible movie scripts, and I couldn’t get auditions. I thought, maybe I could write a terrible script for myself.'”Mike Fleming Jr.Deadline article How Jason Hall Went From Struggling Actor To Hot Screenwriter With American Sniper And Two More Deals Coming

P.S. If you read the whole Deadline article you’ll discover that Hall actually got into a second physical confrontation while doing fact-finding on Chris Kyle’s life. It helps that Hall is 6’3″ and wrestled in his youth because I don’t think any film schools or writing workshops include wrestling as part of their curriculum. It’s also worth noting that Hall wrestled with the story for three years before turning in the American Sniper script. And since Hall is 42-years-old, I’d guess that his journey to wild Hollywood success took about 20 years.

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100 percent of the screenwriters who now have agents at one time didn’t have an agent. 100 percent of screenwriters who are now working at one time weren’t working. 100 percent of the screenwriters who have made money at screenwriting at one time time didn’t made a dime.” Michael Hauge Writing Screenplays that Sells page […]